Issues and Debates

• types of ethical issues

  protection from harm

  deception

  right to withdraw

  informed consent

  social sensitivity
• studies demonstrating ethical issues

  Milgram shock experiment

  • protection from harm
  • right to withdraw
  • deception

  Harlow rhesus monkeys

  • protection from harm
  • right to withdraw
• strength and weakness of social sensitivity

  strength

  • can benefit group being studied
  • Kinsey et al - studied thousands of men and women, helped to get homosexuality removed in 1973 from the 1952 DSM5 as a sociopathic personality disorder
  • real-world application
  • policymakers rely on research to make decisions on healthcare, childcare, education and crime etc.

  weakness

  • can be negative consequences
  • criminal gene can be used as an excuse like in the Mobley defense
• methodology of idiographic and nomothetic

  idiographic

  • small sample
  • focuses on the individual experience
  • subjective
  • detailed qualitative data
  • unstructured interviews

  nomothetic

  • aim to make generalisable laws about human behaviour
  • objective
  • quantitative data
  • structured questionnaires
• applications of idiographic and nomothetic

  idiographic

  • most associated with humanistic and psychodynamic approaches
  • Rogers role of unconditional positive regard in self-development
  • Freud development of phobias with Little Hans

  nomothetic

  • most associated with behaviourist and biological approaches
  • Skinner rat box to understand learning
  • Sperry split-brain research to understand hemispheric lateralisation
• holism and reductionism


  holism

  • looks at a system as a whole
  • associated with the humanistic approach
  • qualitative data

  reductionism

  • breaks behaviour down into subcomponents
• types of reductionism


  biological

  • weakest level
  • e.g. influence of drugs in treating disorders
  • associated with the biological approach

  environmental

  • ignores role of nature
  • e.g. learning theory of attachment reduces idea of love and promotes idea of food
  • associated with the behaviourist approach
• nature vs nurture


  nature

  • influence of genes

  nurture

  • influence of environment

  can be measured using concordance rates

  diathesis-stress takes into account both sides of the debate
• free-will vs determinism


  free-will

  • suggests we are active agents
  • we control our own behaviour

  determinism

  • hard - rejects idea of free-will
  • soft - acknowledges a small role of free-will
  • believes we are controlled by external forces
• types of determinism


  biological

  environmental

  psychic
• gender bias


  alpha bias - exaggerates difference between men and women

  • Freud - oedipus and electra complex

  beta bias - minimizes difference between men and women

  • fight or flight response

  androcentrism - the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of women due to the male-centric standards of research
• culture bias


  universality - is it globally generalisable?

  ethnocentrism - belief in superiority of ones own culture

  • Ainsworth strange situation

  cultural relativism - creates an imposed etic due to the findings only being understood from the perspective in which they were studied in